4 Reasons to Track Inventory in Autotask

Every IT professional or managed service provider (MSP) should be tracking inventory, even if servers, workstations and other equipment ship directly to clients and never come through your doors. If you already track inventory in your accounting system, pat yourself on the back, and then start tracking it in Autotask instead.

Many Autotask users don’t realize this is possible, but it’s easy to do and provides multiple benefits. Consider just these four:

Less work: Your products already are listed in Autotask. It’s basically one extra step to track these as inventory as opposed to inputting the same information in a separate system. (If you are using QuickBooks, you can actually sync the inventory from Autotask to QuickBooks if needed, and this capability is coming soon for Great Plains and Sage.)

Accurate billing and profitability reporting: You can tie products directly to the billing engine and client-profitability reports. So many times companies get really busy and buy lots of equipment in advance of need — maybe with a credit card — and then some of the individual sales never get looped back to billing. Not only is this direct loss, it also causes inaccurate profitability measures.

Improved customer service: Recording inventory in the same place with warranty information, serial numbers, delivery status, license-expiration dates and other product information creates a standardized process for retrieving it. This streamlines customer responsiveness and enables customer service teams to cue up alerts for proactive customer care.

Reduced risk and errors: Even if you think your company isn’t tracking inventory, chances are someone is. Someone is executing a purchase, and someone is executing a sale, so there are at least two records. How would you know if these records reconcile? If you had to audit inventory, where would you look for the trail? Not tracking inventory increases risk of error and theft. On the flip side, tracking inventory in a business-management platform designed for visibility and accountability is a great way to reduce those risks.

If you use Autotask, all inventory items are already listed as products. Users can create inventory items directly from products. Don’t go back and convert old records. There’s no benefit. Just choose a point in time, enter the proper accounts, and get started.

Rayanne BuchianicoOwner
Rayanne the owner of ABC Solutions LLC, a consulting firm in Clearwater, Fla., that provides complete accounting, business, and tax consulting services to IT professionals, particularly to those using Autotask and looking to integrate with their accounting systems. As an Autotask Certified Consulting Partner and a Certified QuickBooks Professional Advisor, she offers courses and blogs on tips on both systems regularly.